Abstract: Discussion of the role of the
blogosphere in propagating climate scepticism echoes the focus on
misinformation implicit in the deficit model. This characterization of the
climate sceptic blogosphere suggests an arena without rules or evaluative
logics. Yet this is not borne out by a cosmological analysis of climate sceptic
blogs. In this paper, preliminary research is presented on the legitimation
codes that underpin how ideal knowers and legitimate knowledge are construed on
the climate sceptic blogosphere. On the blogosphere there is a commitment to
unpacking the black box of science and evaluating it from the position that can
be characterized as a toxic knowledge code, a schema for the
legitimation of knowledge that emphasises the procedural component of knowledge
and deems illegitimate the trained gaze of contributory experts that involve
tacit insights and judgements. From this idealization of science evidence of
the social relations that underpin knowledge practices, interpretive latitude
in the construction of knowledge or tacit semantic density can undermine the
legitimacy of knowledge. The strength of epistemic relations advocated
impedes knowledge-building rather than strengthening it. Understanding these
idealizations of knowledge production can allow for a more complete
understanding of alternative modes of knowledge production and contestation
online. Ultimately allowing for more effective strategies of engagement with
online counter-movements.

During a lecture before the Eugenics Society in 1937, British economist John Maynard Keynes stated that “a greater cumulative increment than 1 per cent per annum in the standard of life has seldom proved practicable”. Moreover, Keynes continued, “generally speaking the rate of improvement seems to have been somewhat less then 1 per cent per annum cumulative”. Of course, Keynes was speaking during the great depression, and therefore his remarks may be tainted with a particular pessimism. But they draw into sharp relief the experience of economic growth in post-war Japan: between 1950 and 1973, GDP growth averaged 10%, a rate of sustained growth never before seen .By 1962, the English publication Economist, with poetic flair, dubbed Japan’s recovery an “economic miracle” . This designation caught on and became a general catch phrase for spectacular economic growth. In the case of Japan, a multitude of explanations have arisen for why Japan underwent an ‘economic miracle’. Crucial to el…

Western Marxism has often laid considerable stress upon the ideology of modern capitalist societies. This focus upon ideology stems from the failure of proletarian revolution to have either occurred, or establish socialism within Western Europe. The exact nature and function of ideology became paramount in Marxian explanations of the continued stability of Western capitalism after the Great War and Great Depression. Marxian conceptualizations of symbolic domination (under the notion of ideology) remain in the realm of consciousness and intellectual frameworks. Pierre Bourdieu developed a paradigm for understanding symbolic power and domination through his theory of dispositional practices that breaks with the concept of ideology and it basis in the tradition of ‘Kantian intellectualism’. This theoretical model both deepens and broadens the sociological understanding of symbolic power and domination, through the acknowledgment of non-intellectual and bodily elements in the dynamics of…